Tuesday, August 27, 2013

My friends and family will be ready to bet on the fact that by no stretch of imagination can I be called an 'artsy-craftsy' person.

I'm almost embarrassed to let my childhood friends know that I have started sewing! Most of them would kill themselves laughing! They've been testimony to many an insult hurled at me by my high school needlework teacher! She was a lovely lady otherwise, but she had extraordinary fits of hysteria whenever she saw my needlework projects. I could never quite predict her reactions - she always caught me by surprise ( shock, more like!) with a much higher degree of disapproval than I thought was reasonable!

I can still hear her words ringing in my ears. "WRetCHed THing", she used to say! I'm not sure if the comment was limited to the piece of work or to the trembling twelve year old who hopelessly held it! The number of times I had to unpick and redo! Traumatic!

Well, I'm starting by up-cycling unloved things around the house - so I don't feel awful if I mess things up!
Anyways, I can see light at the end of the tunnel - a terribly long tunnel and an awfully small light, I should admit!

Friday, August 23, 2013

A good show on the whole, but was very very disappointed by his guide Sala Kannan in Madurai, who did a wrong translation of the Tamil sign stating the below in the Meenakshi Amman temple.

இரை தேடும் முன் இறை தேடு
She translated it to "Seek food before you seek God/Truth" which sounds great on a food programme, but guess what? IT IS NOT TRUE! It actually means the OPPOSITE!!!! "Seek the Truth before you seek food".

In fact, it goes completely against the spirit of the Tamil literature - A highly revered work in the language called Thirukkural says "When there is nothing to feed your ears (implies knowledge), may your stomach be fed a little too."

As you'd expect, it did go well with several foodies and especially Rick - he repeated it at least thrice in the programme at different times and I didn't even watch the whole series! I don't blame him!

I was livid because this is not the first time. Very often people take cookery shows for granted. I for one, watch food programmes, because they provide little snippets into the culture of the place and lives of people. I'm sure I'm not alone! Wouldn't we rather not know something than know it wrong?

Well, the next time you see a food programme and the person speaks like a native, dresses like a native, is probably a native and appears to kindly interpret a signboard in the native language - take it with a pinch of salt.. er...actually loads and loads of salt! It's about food, after all!